The Dozerfleet Blog
The Dozerfleet Blog was the official blog for Dozerfleet Productions and its founder. It was initiated on February 17th of 2011, as a replacement for the highly inefficient forum. It was rendered defunct on October 1st of 2011, due to low ratings and inefficiency with maintenance. It's posts were moved into a Blog Archives space, and the blog was removed from Blogger. Future posts of the blog's nature were set to be posted to the Dozerfleet founder's social media outlets; including Facebook, and Google+ The Blog was resurrected on Tumblr on September 8th of 2012. This was following a redesign of the front page as well as a falling out with Twitter. It was later discontinued in 2016. History Creation of the Blog allowed Utterly Sims (later DzMD) to become part of the Wiki, and also to merge with Dozerfleet Labs. A lot of old archives from the Forum were moved to the Blog. The Blog served as an area for commentary and discussion in-length of issues of interest to the Dozerfleet founder; but not necessarily issues pertaining to project history as is the Wiki's focus. Lack of membership at the Forum, loss of CSS control, difficulty with service, and all-around desire to modernize pushed the Dozerfleet founder to abandon traditional message boards and get a blog that could interact with the wiki. Transition was finalized on February 17th of 2011 at the Grand Ledge House. Other predecessors In the days before social networking, newsletters were typed up in Microsoft Publisher and physically mailed to someone's home address. During the Cormorant era, this was the only way for the Dozerfleet founder to do such things shy of posting comments to someone else's online forum. Two noteworthy predecessors to the Blog and Forum both would be Yo-Splaz! Newsletter and Dolphinformia, both presses of which were designed specifically with two of the Dozerfleet founder's past love interests in mind. Carly was the recipient of Yo-Splaz! and Emily of Dolphinformia, though neither one routinely wrote back concerning either publication. Concerning Wilgrace, Facebook contact replaced the traditional system. Political topics were addressed in detail on the Blog, and in short on Facebook and Twitter. As of the 2012 reboot, the Blog has gone back to dealing with political topics. However, topics are split between ones that the main blog is designed for and others that are handled by the Dozerfleet founder's personal blog. Following the 2012 election, DozerfleetWiki's mention of the Dozerfleet founder's political handlings was designated to be history and archival only. Any current campaigning and crusading for causes or candidates was designated to be moved to the blogs and off the wiki. Wilinski Forest On Friday, October 26th of 2012, the Dozerfleet founder's personal blog was re-branded as "Wilinski Forest," the place "from which Ivan observes a world in turmoil." These references to names and places and events in Ride of the Three Bulldozers allowed for the personal blog to receive a radical facelift. This was done in preparation of Tuesday, November 6th of 2012, at which point Wilinski Forest's content and that of The Dozerfleet Blog would cease their redundancy agreement. Wilinski Forest, an offshoot project of The Dozerfleet Blog and DozerfleetWiki, got to be the location from which the Dozerfleet founder could discuss contents that did not pertain to Dozerfleet operations per se, such as the Stop the Crooked Rainbow Campaign. This new agreement freed up the Dozerfleet Blog to be more clearly and explicitly about project developments. The benefit of having one blog dedicated to political/social/life commentary and another to project development was not only that it expanded the overall Dozerfleet Web Network significantly; but also that it reduced a lot of burdens on the Wiki in terms of trying to remain current. It also created a place for breaking news that eliminated the need for the Wiki to have a front page Twitter feed. On August 11th of 2013, Wilinski Forest was given a slight facelift. The interface was streamlined to a small degree from what it had been. New pages were created for dealing with special political topics that would remain pinned. Search and pagination were merged into one glass slab navigation box, where they had previously been forced to occupy two different boxes. The top logo was also reduced considerably in size. The big, flashy image of Ivan bearing his shotgun site title was reduced to the site's icon and a text logo. While 3D options had been explored for view, there were disabled on August 11th until a more effective system for 3D viewing options could be implemented. Other than the fact that the Ivan character inside the site icon was based on and inspired by the pixels in a Sims screenshot of Ivan, virtually nothing of the originally Sims 3-heavy interface remained post-facelift. On August 17th of 2013, around 5:29 PM EDT, the interface was updated again to allow for a two-column newsfeed with infinite scroll. Glow-Tile makeover Using the Tumblr Theme Generator, the Dozerfleet Blog updated its interface on February 20th of 2014 to use a 2-column interface similar to the one that Wilinski Forest was updated to a year prior. However, the infinite scroll feature was removed. "Glow-Tile" was based on the Microsoft Design Language (formerly known as "Metro") UI school of design, and set to integrate with Microsoft devices such as the Surface in terms of UI functionality. This was a shift away from the much-heavier-handed "Glass-Slab" interface that was in place before, which was modeled after Aero. Content Blog contents documented the following: Dozerfleet Blog contents * Current event details pertaining to particular projects, sharing them in ways and with a focus that cannot be adequately addressed on the Wiki. * Replies to posts on other sites. * Acknowledgements of completed Dozerfleet Database articles. Wilinski Forest contents * Current events, political issues, and social issues (Split between Facebook and Wilinski Forest.) Former Twitter connections Promotion of Blog posts was done through the Dozerfleet Twitter account and through Facebook. Also, Twitter posts were the short feed version of Blog posts, whereas The Dozerfleet Blog itself included the long forms. Later, Twitter was repurposd for the front page wiki newsfeeds. Following a falling out with Twitter, the Dozerfleet founder abandoned all use for Twitter. The Wiki's front page has since replaced its newsfeed for a link to the Dozerfleet Blog, encouraging visitors to go there for news updates. Events One of the Dozerfleet Blog's first major campaigns was the Stop the Crooked Rainbow Campaign, aimed at pointing out how willing homosexual militants in America are to resort to illegal activities to push for their special privileges, as well as showing that there is absolutely nothing "fallacy" about the slippery slope. On September 20th of 2012, it began a new campaign on the front page. This campaign encouraged visitors to be supportive of Hobby Lobby as it filed a lawsuit against Obama"care." Hosting The Dozerfleet Blog was hosted on Blogger, which seemed like a reasonable choice given the freedoms for content that Blogger allowed its users. Given that a lot of Dozerfleet operations are run through Google-owned properties already, it made integration a breeze. This was also decided before the announcement of Google+. Therefore; all Twitter, Blogger, some LinkedIn, Wikia, and a small amount of Gmail-related activities end up relaying back to the Dozerfleet founder's Facebook account. Blog-branded content was rebranded with the Dozerfleet Literature imprint. Gallery Image:Blogscreenshot.jpg|Screenshot of The Dozerfleet Blog (Blogger Edition,) September 6th, 2011 Image:OldTwitter.jpg|Original Twitter page. Image:DfBlog-Tumblr-Firefox.jpg|Screenshot of The Dozerfleet Blog (Tumblr Edition,) September 11th, 2011 Image:WilinskiForestLogo-Wiki.jpg|2012 logo for Wilinski Forest, depicting Ivan Wilinski defending his stretch of the woods. Image:WilinskiForestScreenshot-8-11-2013.jpg|Screenshot of Wilinski Forest re-design on August 11th of 2013. Image:WilinskiForestScreenshot-8-17-2013.jpg|Screenshot of Wilinski Forest on August 17th of 2013, after updating the interface to two columns. Image:TheDozerfleetBlog-GlowTile-2-20-2014.jpg|Screenshot of The Dozerfleet Blog after upgrading to Glow-Tile on February 20th of 20114. See also * Dozerfleet Database * The Dozerfleet Forum * Dozerfleet Blog archives on this wiki Category: Defunct Dozerfleet divisions